Six In The Morning: Calgary, America, Mandela, Nigella, Pixies!!!

1 CALGARY AFTER THE FLOOD Up to 12,000 people will be out of their homes “for a long time”. Our thoughts are with them. Meanwhile, a former Environment Canada deputy minister says a lot of Canadian municipalities are unprepared for expensive, climate change related disasters. Details aplenty, here.

2 IT’S GOING TO BE A TERRIBLE WEEKEND If you’re a vampire. The rest of us can look forward to heat and sun. Hooray!

Whenever one group discriminates against another — keeping its members out of a club, a public facility or an institution — it often boils down to a visceral, negative response to something unfamiliar. I call this the “ick.” Indeed, the “ick” is often at the base of the politics of exclusion. Just this March, for example, a young woman at an anti-same-sex-marriage rally in Washington was asked to write down, in her own words, why she was there. Her answer: “I can’t see myself being with a woman. Eww.” Frankly, as a gay man, I can’t see myself being with one, either. But it’s usually not gays who write the laws. If this woman were in Congress, her personal discomfort might infect her thinking — and her lawmaking. Gays kissing? Ick.

Yay!

5 OOOH, THE BAD, BAD RCMP COLLECTED UNATTENDED GUNS AFTER A FLOOD, HOW TERRIBLE, OFFENSIVE The Prime Minister’s Office apparently thinks the RCMP should worry about people’s safety, not unattended firearms which could NEVER be a threat to anyone. What a bunch of imbeciles. Do these people pay any attention to the contradiction-filled stupidities in their own public statements? I like the RCMP response: “We seized any firearms that were noted that were in plain view. We seized what we saw that could potentially be a hazard. Anything properly stored in gun lockers was left.”

6 SHE’S OUT It looks like celebrity chef Nigella Lawson has left her husband, art collector and documented wife-choker Charles Saatchi. Good.

(5) When you consider the looting that took place a couple of years ago at Roche Percee, which was still under water at the time, the action taken by the RCMP was prudent, to say the least. And, to be fair to the gun owners, they and everyone else in High River had minutes’ notice to get out, so perhaps securing their firearms was not top of mind. Next time, certainly it should be…if they persist in living at such a floodable locale.

Had the RCMP not secured the firearms in question, and had looters made their way into High River and nicked them, no doubt there would be a storm of complaint about the force’s failure to protect property.